Darkness Undone ms-4 Read online

  Darkness Undone

  ( Marked Souls - 4 )

  Jessa Slade

  The war between good and evil has raged for millennia, and as a powerful new enemy ascends, the Marked Souls are pushed to the ragged edge…

  Sidney Westerbrook has always studied darkness and damnation from a sensible distance. Now, to earn his place as a league Bookkeeper, he must discover why Chicago is such a battleground of soul-linked warriors. But the research becomes personal when he finds himself over his head and under attack — and at the mercy of a waif with demon-lit eyes and a deep yearning in her heart.

  Alyce Carver has been alone longer than she can remember, battered by the living nightmares that haunt her city. Cornered by yet another gang of demons, she unwittingly joins forces with a handsome scholar who can salvage her past, and she in turn may be the key to his investigations. But she won’t let him go until he shows her everything she’s been missing.

  What begins as an experiment in possession becomes a trial by desire so powerful it threatens both their lives, even as it binds their souls.

  DARKNESS UNDONE

  A NOVEL OF THE MARKED SOULS

  JESSA SLADE

  To PopPop:

  An engineer first, but an artist too. You gave me some good

  material, genetics-wise, and some funny stories.

  Miss you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My editor, Kerry Donovan, and agent, Becca Stumpf, have been with me from Chapter 1 to glossary, from cover art first-glimpse squees to back cover copyedits. “Thank you” is only two words (can I say anything in two words?) and doesn’t even begin to capture my gratitude.

  The entire team at NAL brings my books to life—and to bookshelves—and I can’t thank them enough, especially Jesse Feldman and Kayleigh Clark; copy editor Jane Steele (who had to put up with all my beloved sentence fragments); and Gene Mollica and Adam Auerbach, who put a chest (if not a face) on my sexy hero.

  Mwahs to my cheerleading beta reader, Delilah Marvelle, whose energy in her writing and in her life inspires me endlessly.

  As I write this, Book Blogger Appreciation Week is coming to a close, but I want to give them a shout-out here too, considering how their delight in and ardent support of romance has contributed substantially to my to-be-read mountain. Extra special thanks to Bitten by Books, Night Owl Reviews, Errant Dreams Reviews, Romance Reviews Today, and Smexy Books Romance Reviews.

  All families put up with craziness in their loved ones, but maybe writers’ families sigh more deeply, with a little extra angst. To my family and Scott, much, much thanks and love, love, love.

  Dear new Bookkeeper,

  Sucks to be you.

  You’re probably flipping through these mostly blank pages where the notes for the last year should be, wondering why the archives of the Chicago league of demon-possessed male talya warriors haven’t been updated lately. Honestly, as the temp secretary, I’ve been superbusy. Mostly doing my nails.

  Hey, sharpened nails come in very handy against the lurking evil of the horde-tenebrae.

  Besides, calfskin, goose quills, and illuminated letters went out a long time ago. You Bookkeepers should try Twitter.

  So here’re the past eleven months—since the demonic possession of the first female in a couple thousand years (that’d be me) and the return of the mated symballein bond—condensed to 140 characters with gratuitous emoticons and random misspellings:

  More evul than evuh WTF? Djinn-man wants to destroy the world (X_X) But wait! T&A + witty repartee = True Love Saves the Day!
  Well, that pretty much covers it. I can’t imagine you’ll have any more questions. Now that you’re here, I’ll be out slaying bad things. Don’t worry; just regular ol’ bad things—like ratty little malice, huge stinky ferales, and burning salambes—not insanely powerful, straight-up insane djinn-men like Corvus Valerius, who had the nerve to open a portal into hell before we vanquished him three months ago. No thanks to our former Bookkeeper who betrayed us and helped unleash the repentant demon that possessed me and started this whole damn mess. We won’t hold that against you, though. Really.

  We know the ranks of Bookkeeping masters frown on us pulverizing tweaking the traditions the London league has upheld for centuries, but—did I mention?—sucks to be you. Welcome to Chicago.

  Sera Littlejohn, Interim Bookkeeper

  CHAPTER 1

  To human senses, the Chicago night was dark and quiet—at least as dark and quiet as a big city could be. But Sidney Westerbrook knew, somewhere beyond the stark neon and the shouts with the flattened vowels that grated on his merely human eyes and ears, the streets seethed with demonic fury.

  And after coming nearly four thousand miles, he wasn’t getting the chance to experience any of it.

  Sid stuffed his hands to the bottom of his trouser pockets, as if he might find a last kilojoule of warmth down there. His father had warned him London’s fog had nothing on Chicago’s wind.

  Then again, his father had warned him of quite a lot, only some of which had seemed relevant. Sid hunched his shoulders, and his gusty sigh bounced off the upturned collar of his tweed jacket, fogging his spectacles.

  Who would’ve guessed the Chicago talyan would be such contrary blighters? All his Bookkeeper studies had prepared him for the same old, same old: immortal, menacing warriors with preternatural fighting skills and tortured demon-possessed souls, et cetera. But these upstart Yanks—from one of the secondary leagues, no less—had blown apart the theories of generations of Bookkeepers before him. Yet despite their obvious need for objective guidance, they wouldn’t give him, their emergency Bookkeeper, even the time of day.

  No way in hell were they giving him their nights.

  Though Sid didn’t have a talya’s enhanced vision, the flow of demonic ethers was clearly unsettled in Chicago. He’d hypothesized as much from the sharply refracted energy in every talya iris—purplish glints even an unschooled human would notice. The borderline morbid array of close-quarters weaponry had been another hint. But Liam Niall, the leader of the Chicago league, had refused to let Sid accompany them on patrol.

  “It’s your first night in town,” he’d said. “Kick the jet lag. Then we’ll show you … everything, as London requested.”

  Sid hadn’t needed enhanced hearing either, to pick up that disdainful pause. Most of the world’s major cities had @1 leagues since demonic activity tied into population density and the sorts of upheavals that regularly made the evening news. All the leagues were distinctly autonomous and fighting to hold their burden of darkness at bay. But London, having inherited the position from Rome in the days of expanding empires, held perhaps a “first among equals” distinction, though the other leagues might not readily concede. Probably didn’t help matters that Niall had been a victim of the Irish potato famine, which had its rotting roots in British agrarian politics.

  That quarrel, in case anyone wanted to consult a calendar, had been dead and buried for a century and a half. Although obviously “dead” meant something different to immortals.

  Sid crushed his fists down hard enough to turn pocket lint to felt. Just what he needed; another old man unwilling to let him in.

  He dodged across the street, avoiding a cab that had run the red. He responded to the unwarranted honk with an appropriate American gesture. In some ways, cities were all the same. Certainly he could find common ground with these big, taciturn talya males and their three smaller but equally unnerving females. London might have loaned him to Chicago while his last journeyman Bookkeeper thesis was under review, but if he wanted to prove his mastery—if he wanted all the sacrifices to mean anything—exposing, exploring, and explaining some heretofore unknown talya secret would cert
ainly do the trick.

  And the Chicago league had secrets to burn.

  He passed an iron stanchion supporting the elevated train, turned the next corner, and came face-to-face with … fangs.

  A squeak of surprise squeezed from his chest.

  When his thinking forebrain caught up with his hindbrain, he winced at his instinctive reaction. The rubber monster mask in the shop window wasn’t coming for his jugular.

  He let out a slow breath, calming the rush of his pulse. He straightened his spectacles and leaned closer to the window. The molded tusks were coated in frightfully realistic gore as if they’d just emerged from someone’s thorax. He’d forgotten All Hallows’ Eve was less than a fortnight away. Not that the demonic tenebrae scheduled holidays.

  He walked on, suddenly thankful he was alone tonight. If the talyan had witnessed that squeak, he’d never earn their respect.

  But there was no one around.

  No one at all.

  His heel scuffed the pavement as his steps slowed. The soft scrape repeated down the throat of the dank alley off to his right. He swallowed in disgust at the stench of stewed trash. Really, that costume shop should try bottling the stink for a gag gift—emphasis on gag.

  He peered back toward the intersection where the cab had almost sideswiped him. The red flash of brakes and illuminated crosswalk signs blinked with ordinary, reassuring liveliness, but in that moment, bustling humanity seemed strangely far away.

  Distance was good. Distance put things in perspective; letting Niall’s snub provoke him had been stupid. Well, he’d blame the jet lag and be his own composed Bookkeeper self on the morrow.

  Before he could take another step, a disfigured shadow charged out of the alley toward him in a blur of grizzled fur and scabrous gray skin.

  Pinched together on a ratlike head, the feralis’s bulbous eyes raged with an unholy orange flame. Its tapered jaws gaped wide to expose finger-length incisors. Curiously, the fangs looked sharper on the rubber version. …

  Sid stumbled back. Adrenaline soaked through him in a hot wash like thin, bitter coffee.

  Told you so, said his hindbrain.

  He turned to run, but the feralis sprang at him, fiendishly quick on its clawed feet. Its jaws sank into his left shoulder. The shock was literal as well as academic when the teeth sliced through the heavy wool tweed of his coat, into muscle, and—judging by the unpleasant grinding noise—all the way through to bone.

  “Bloody hell!” Agony spiked above the adrenaline—the archives never footnoted how much a feralis bite hurt!—and his vision narrowed to brick and blood and darkness.

  The feralis shook him once, twice, snapping his head back as if he were nothing more than a chew toy. His spectacles flew off—now the brick, blood, and darkness were blurry—and his spine twisted with a searing streak of pain.

  He flailed with his free arm, and something damp crumpled under his fist. Had he smacked its rotting gums? Or its eyeball? His stomach heaved. The talyan never reported squeamishness. Was that a result of indifference or pride?

  The rest of him heaved too as the feralis tossed him toward the alley. He hit the pavement and bounced. The brutal blow to his shoulder jolted the breath from him and condensed his vision to a single bloody point.

  The red dot winked out. And reappeared. And multiplied to a hundred tiny glittering points. Malice eyes split the darkness like crimson open wounds, not fuzzy at all, despite his nearsightedness. The smoldering, oily smoke of a salambe threaded past the crimson like an evil party streamer.

  There were certain times when being a bit on the dim side would be preferable.

  Night air leached through the hole in his coat, but he wasn’t cold. Between the alarming slick of blood matting the tweed and the singe of the feralis’s poisoned bite, he was feeling almost stuffy.

  Of course, Bookkeepers were often accused of being stuffy. His father had countered, saying a Bookkeeper was duty-bound to replace nonsensical emotions with the quest for understanding.

  As if understanding the inevitability made it any easier to die.

  The feralis snapped at a second tenebrae crowding in. Two more of the tenebrae skittered behind them on spidery legs. The mutant quartet shuffled closer, and the air between the brick walls thickened with the stench of decay until Sid’s eyes watered.

  Bloody marvelous. Now the talyan would find his mangled corpse with tears on his cheeks. Maybe sheer mortification at their comparative weakness was why Bookkeepers were tutored past emotion.

  The pain in his shoulder spread in paralyzing waves, but his right hand still worked. He scrabbled along the asphalt for a loose brick, an empty bottle, maybe a rocket launcher. But only pebbles and bits of glass rolled under his desperate fingertips. Not even a dustbin to shelter behind. What sort of evil city kept its alleys so tidy?

  “Don’t fight, lads,” he choked out. How many times had his father chided him with those words? “Run along now.”

  “They must fight.”

  The voice—barely a whisper behind him—jerked him around with the force of sharper teeth sunk into his flesh.

  From the deepest pool of shadows, a girl, clothed in nothing more than a once-white shift, coalesced like a mist in front of his straining eyes. Her thin arms were bare, and she held herself so tightly, her fingers chased the last of the blood from her skin.

  Her hair fell in loose waves over her face and past her shoulders. Between the dark strands, her gaze—eerily pale—was hazy, and a distracted frown arrowed in one line between her arched brows. She took a limping step forward.

  What was she doing in the empty alley? Doing drugs or a john? If her moral compass was as unsteady as her steps, she’d be an easy target for the tenebrae evil. He tried to pull himself toward her, and his fingers closed over the smooth frames of his spectacles.

  He jerked them on, crookedly. At least now he could see his oncoming demise.

  “Get out of here,” he hissed. He wouldn’t let another innocent die because once again he’d been in the wrong place at a bad time. Whatever or whoever she’d been doing, she didn’t deserve this. “Go. Now!”

  For a heartbeat, her eyes cleared, but it was like winter clouds clearing the night sky to reveal a moon icy, distant, and dead. “Go where?”

  “Away.” Fear for her congealed in his throat until he could barely push out the words. “Just go.”

  Her pale gaze lifted to the ferales. “They have to fight. I have to fight too.”

  If the feralis attack had been a blur, the girl was a lightning bolt.

  One moment she was far enough down the alley that he thought she had a chance to escape. In his next breath, she was amidst the ferales. Her skirt fluttered behind her as she ducked between the two spidery tenebrae, avoiding the stabs of their spearlike legs with artless grace despite her limp.

  Shrieking, the salambe shot up in a tight spiral out of the alley. All the malice swarmed after it, like incorporeal rats in the wake of a sinking ship.

  That couldn’t be a good sign.

  God, she wasn’t even half their size, and she was so thin, the ferales would snap through her in one unsatisfying bite. She could have gained an inch or two if she had at least been wearing shoes.

  He surged upright, determined to throw himself into the fray beside her.

  With a roundhouse kick, she slammed her foot into his head and knocked him to the ground again. This might have ticked him off, except his spectacles stayed on this time, so he had a clear view of the feralis that launched over her and landed right where he would have been, had he still been standing.

  From his sprawl, he slammed his trainers at the feralis. At least he wasn’t wearing tasseled loafers, which his father claimed awarded Bookkeepers a proper visual distinction from the booted talyan.

  The feralis hopped sideways with a hiss. From its jaws, slaver dripped, backlit yellow from the streetlights. Those fangs were looking sharper by the second.

  The girl grabbed the creature by its fles
hy tail and hauled it backward. The lean muscles in her bare arms quivered as the feralis bawled, spraying sulfurous drool. If Sid hadn’t known better, he would have said the tenebrae was … afraid. Its claws peeled up curls of asphalt, but it could not resist her relentless force. Her irises gleamed violet.

  Sid sucked in a shocked breath. She wasn’t human either.

  What astounding luck! His first night in Chicago, and he’d found a female talya. She wasn’t associated with the league, or Niall would have mentioned her. She must be newly possessed—and unconstrained by the knowledge and rules of the league culture. A tabula rasa, ready for imprinting.

  Exhilaration made his head spin. Or maybe that was blood loss.

  He winced as she gained traction and heaved the feralis over her shoulder into the remaining trio. Her vise grip tore the tail loose in an arc of ichor. The tenebrae screamed, and the warbling cry hit an octave that iced Sid’s spine.

  Immortal and inhumanly strong the girl might be, compelled by her repentant demon to fight evil, but she could still be killed. Four marauding ferales—well, three marauding and one that seemed a little shaken—were deadly foes.

  He pulled himself upright. He couldn’t lose her, not when a journeyman Bookkeeper could write his ticket to London mastery on such a find.

  She shoved him back again, and he stumbled into the wall. “Enough!” he shouted, pushing off the bricks. “I want to help you.”

  She ignored him and lashed out with the tail in her hand. The fleshy whip snaked though the air to drive the ferales back.

  Chunks of rot crumbled from the makeshift weapon. Decaying feralis husks never held up well. Sid knew the corrosive ichor congealed within the husks must be burning through the girl’s hands, but she never hesitated. With her demon ascendant, she’d feel nothing—not pain, not fear, not loss.

  How simple the world must look through the violet eyes of possession. For the merest incomplete contraction of his cardiac musculature—not even a full heartbeat—he wished she could share that simplicity with him.